Twitter Data Can Provide Early Insights Into TV Ratings: Study

About 32M people in the U.S. tweeted about TV shows last year. And a study out this morning from Nielsen and SocialGuide says that programmers should pay attention: The seemingly random messages Twitter users generate can provide a statistically meaningful early warning about whether a show is catching on. “We expected to see a correlation between Twitter and TV ratings, but this study quantifies the strength of that relationship,” says Andrew Somosi, CEO of SocialGuide, which is co-owned by Nielsen and McKinsey and monitors the links between social media and TV. For example, the firms saw a pattern for shows that had been on at least one season. Ratings for the premiere episode vs the previous season tended to be 1% higher among 18- to 34-year-olds when their tweets about the show were up 8.5%. Similarly, premiere ratings for 35- to 49-year-olds rose 1% when their tweets were +14%. The pattern held for midseason shows: This time ratings among the younger group rose 1% when their tweets increased 4.2% while the older group showed a bump when their messages were +8.4%. “While our study doesn’t prove causality, the correlation we uncovered is significant and we will continue our research to deepen the industry’s understanding of this relationship,” Nielsen EVP Mike Hess says.

7 Comments

zangadog • on Mar 20, 2013 7:38 am

Fantastic news. Twitter is basically the same as millions of people shouting at each other in an open field, but marketing execs consider it a vital tool to use while making all the same boneheaded decisions.

Bill • on Mar 20, 2013 7:38 am

Actually, what Nielsen is trying to say is… “Twitter is just as accurate as us.”

AB • on Mar 20, 2013 7:38 am

OMG, #hilarious

John • on Mar 20, 2013 7:38 am

You must not use Twitter.

chickenparm • on Mar 20, 2013 7:38 am

Actually, this says nothing at all except shows that are bigger on one platform are also bigger on another. They admit they can’t point to any causality — I would suspect bigger TV shows drive more Twitter usage is a more likely conclusion than the other way around.

right now, “scandal” benefits greatly from twitter because the cast live tweets and is very engaged with their followers. but not all shows can/should/need to do this.

USA Network as a whole is also very good with using twitter to promote their shows.

but it would be terribly ill-advised and inaccurrate to link twitter with ratings.

Hector Grumble • on Mar 20, 2013 7:38 am

It’s a big coincidence that Nielsen should release this report (they wrote) two days after Wired posted an article claiming that Nielsen were no longer relevant.

The wired article infers that there is no universal or useful correlation between Nielsen and twitter activity. It goes further to show that there is an (unspoken) industry acceptance that twitter activity is the more important metric for advertisers because it shows that the viewers are actually engaged with the show.

For smaller shows, Nielsen ratings may depend on the activity of less than 100 of their entire survey group. That is a statistically insignificant number of people and their activity should not be extrapolated to cover the entire US audience. The bias is amplified when you realize that Nielsen Families are of an idiosyncratic “Type” that would agree to have their viewing habits monitored.

Nielsen can detect the rise and fall of hit shows, but there are only so many hit shows to go around and their scarcity value may mean that advertisers are not actually getting the best “bang for their buck”.

Twitter on the other hand may provide advertisers with evidence that shows which Nielsen would claim to be dead dogs are actually hives of activity filled with engaged fans and, (thanks to Nielsen’s under-reporting), advertisers can (and do) reach their desired target demographics and headcounts via these “small” shows well below their true market value.